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Mounting NTFS filesystems

Introduction

NTFS (New Technology File System) is a very powerful file system provided with
NT versions of Windows (Windows-NT, Windows-2000, Windows-XP, Windows 7, …).
Even if Windows still supports FAT, the Windows system disk is often formatted
in the NTFS format.

Linux has offered full read support for NTFS partitions for a long time,
however, the NTFS write support that comes with the kernel is still partial.
The write support was improved in linux-2.6.15. If you want a full read-write
support for NTFS disks, you will have to use ntfs-3g (Ntfs third generation
driver), that is a userspace program.

Read only support

If you just want a read support on NTFS disks, you just have to mount it with
the following command (you have to replace xxx with the device name of your
disk):

mount -t ntfs /dev/xxx /mnt/windows -o ro

This read-only support is safe (you cannot alter or damage your data) and may be
used for example if you just want to backup several files, or read a document.

Full Read-Write support

If you really need a complete NTFS Write support, you will have to use ntfs-3g.
It is very easy to use:

ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

In this example, we suppose the device name of the NTFS partition is
/dev/sda1 and the mount point is /mnt/windows. If you
do not know the device name, you should list partitions with
cat /proc/partitions or use GParted.